The Fearless king by Katee Robert

Ultra-wealthy and super powerful, the King family is like royalty in Texas. But their secrets can be deadly.

Fake boyfriend. Real danger.Journey King is an expert at managing the family business. But when her father returns to Houston hell-bent on making a play for the company, Journey will do anything to stop him, even if that means going to Frank Evans for help. Frank deals in information, the dirtier the better. Rugged and rock solid, he's by far her best ally - and also the most dangerous.

Frank knows better than to get tangled up with the Kings. But something about Journey's rare vulnerability drags him deep into enemy territory... and into her darkest past. Pretending to be her boyfriend may be necessary for their plan to work, but Frank soon finds helping Journey is much more than just another job - and he'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe.

Reading ‘The Fearless King’ was sort of bizarre, because it felt like a very well-written drama that I wanted more of, but couldn’t understand because I was tossed straight into the middle of a series at say, episode 143 with a backlog of events that I’d already forgotten about having read the first book a long time ago. As a result, this hardly felt like a standalone with a sorely-lacking backstory that I had to spend quite a bit of time figuring out, right up until the halfway point of the book.

Pare down the layers however, and Frank and Journey’s story is relatively simple at the heart of it, minus the family drama taking place over corporate talk, hostile takeovers and real estate/business territory being muscled in on. He’s her white knight (sort of), she’s his protection project when her abusive father returns to overthrow all her family had worked for. Throw in a fake dating scenario until the emotions turn real, then pad it with even more complicated business and family networks and that’s what ’The Fearless King’ really is about. Basically, if you’re into romantic fiction that deals with corporate manoeuvring, manipulation and backstabbing, then this pretty much takes these themes and runs with them.

I’ve always liked Katee Robert’s compelling writing and this book is just another reminder why.

But there were some things that nagged at me: the insertion of a secondary character’s POV added along with Frank’s and Journey’s that felt out of place, with the background of a family pitted against each other to the extent that some characters seemed as though they were cut out of a Disney villain storyboard. Essentially Robert writes about the scarred, ugly side of powerful families so screwed up and so hungry for power and so…redemption-less and that my reading flagged a little when I got to the middle of it.

Still, Robert’s protagonists surprised me at several turns; Frank/Journey don’t entirely conform to stereotypes even if they sort of stumble into accidental heroism, where it doesn’t take a mountain to recognise that unnamed emotion called love. I can’t quite guess where Robert’s going with this whole tangled mess but it’s looking to be quite a journey—pun unintended.